Confessions of an information worker: a critical analysis of information requirements discourse

Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate the benefit of critical discourse analysis as a research approach for examining information systems development. Research has shown that eliciting user requirements is a critical activity of information systems development. However, the requirements phase is not only a key activity, it is highly problematic. Requirements determination is considered a process fraught with conflicting, inconsistent and competing viewpoints in which users and analysts do not share a “consensual domain,” thus barring them from reaching agreements about requirements. Therefore, analytic tools that recognize and examine requirements analysis as a polyphonic interaction hold much promise for improving requirements elicitation and analysis. Critical discourse analysis offers the tools to examine systematically the fundamental substance of requirements elicitation — interactional talk. This analysis employs sociolinguistic methods for specifying the linguistic features of different types of discourse units and the way they are tied together to create meaning, but also concerns itself with critically examining social context. In this paper requirements elicitation takes on the form of a “confessional” act where the individual verbalizes thoughts, intentions and consciousness. Findings show that during this ritual, discourse is revealed as a dialectic between two different domains of meaning, that of analyst and client. Analysts, in their official roles, propose a “frame” which conflicts with that proposed by clients during interviews. Changes in frames and deft face-saving work during interviews function to discursively produce and challenge client identities. The paper explores the tension between the frames proposed by the analyst and client during interviews which explains some of the frustrations and “gaps” which characterize this type of encounter. Issues of power inequality, identity formation, and symbolic control are presented as explanations of why competing frames are proposed and sustained while resisted by clients.